Baggy Daydreams, Stadium Soul, and Psychedelic Petals in Fall
Week 42 roams from psych tributes and alt mischief to Britpop soul and polished pop depth with bold 90s turns from Eels INXS George Michael and Tears for Fears
AI Generated · · 22 min read
Clowns and Jugglers: The Songs of Syd Barrett by Various 🎪
🎨 How this compilation was put together
Clowns and Jugglers is a newly curated 2026 Syd Barrett tribute rather than a single-session covers album. Gonzo Multimedia assembled it for the wider celebrations around what would have been Barrett’s 80th year, with curation from Mark Wilkinson, Ian Barrett and Rob Ayling. Wilkinson also handled the sleeve art, and Jon Astley mastered the set, which tells you this was planned as a proper event release, not a quick trawl through the archive.
What makes it interesting is the source material. This LP pulls together brand-new studio takes, live recordings from different years and venues, and a few archival pieces. So the record has a scrapbook quality by design. Your pressing’s running order makes that clear straight away, opening with two different routes back to early Floyd, Richard Wright singing “Arnold Layne” at the Barbican, then Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets tearing into “Astronomy Dominé” from the Roundhouse.
🌌 What kind of Syd Barrett picture it paints
This sleeve gathers a remarkably broad cast: Pink Floyd, Richard Wright, Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, David Gilmour, David Bowie, Soft Machine, Kula Shaker, Robyn Hitchcock, Rosalie Cunningham, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, Love’s John Echols, Henge and more. That mix tells you the idea at once. This is not just “songs by the lost founder of Pink Floyd”. It is a map of Barrett’s reach across British psychedelia, prog, folk-pop, heavy psych and the stranger corners of the underground.
The track selection moves between the famous early singles, “Arnold Layne”, “See Emily Play”, “Apples And Oranges”, the Piper material, and the fragile solo work such as “Terrapin”, “Baby Lemonade”, “Golden Hair” and “Late Night”. Then it throws in oddities and deep cuts, with “Scream Thy Last Scream” and Soft Machine’s edited “Rhamadan” broadening the story beyond the obvious canon.
💿 How the sides are paced
The sequencing is smart. Side A eases listeners in with recognisable Barrett-era Floyd and concise songcraft. Side B gets looser and stranger, especially with Kula Shaker’s eight-minute “No Good Trying/Interstellar Overdrive” splice. Side C is the experimental centre of gravity, dominated by Soft Machine’s near ten-minute “Rhamadan”, then pushed further by Uncle Acid and the gloriously named Pünk Barrett. Side D feels like a landing strip, more melodic and reflective, before closing with the big emotional bookend of Gilmour and Bowie on “Arnold Layne”.
⭐ The obvious draws and the lovely surprises
The headline attractions are easy to spot: Wright with Pink Floyd, Mason revisiting early Floyd, and the Gilmour-Bowie “Arnold Layne”, which carries real historical weight. Robyn Hitchcock on “Gigolo Aunt” also feels beautifully apt, given how much of his own writing has Barrett’s crooked English whimsy in its bones.
The surprises are just as good. Martha Wainwright on “See Emily Play” is an unexpected left turn. Uncle Acid tackling “Long Gone” hints at the darker side of Barrett’s writing. Henge doing “Terrapin” suggests cosmic oddness rather than reverence. And Soft Machine’s “Rhamadan” may be the set’s most revealing inclusion, because it places Barrett inside the wider late-60s underground, where pop songs, free-form freak-outs and art-school experiment all rubbed shoulders.
As for reception, this arrived too recently for any settled verdict or chart story, but its appeal is obvious: a collector-minded, lovingly assembled tribute that treats Syd Barrett as a songwriter with a long afterlife, not a ghost trapped in 1967.
- View Clowns and Jugglers: The Songs of Syd Barrett on russ.fm
Cure For Sanity by Pop Will Eat Itself 🤖
Recording a collage, not a band-in-a-room album 🎛️
Released in your UK and Europe vinyl edition on 1 August 1990 through RCA, Cure For Sanity caught Pop Will Eat Itself at a turning point. The band recorded it with Flood at Black Barn in Surrey, starting in May 1990, and that partnership mattered. Flood already had a gift for making dense, machine-led records hit hard without turning into mush, and PWEI needed exactly that. These songs are packed with chants, cut-up voices, guitar noise, drum programming and sudden little radio-play fragments such as “City Zen Radio 1990/2000 FM” and “Medicine Man Speak With Forked Tongue”.
What comes across on this pressing is how carefully the running order has been built. Side A pushes from the brief intro “The Incredible P.W.E.I Vs. The Moral Majority” into the bigger rush of “Dance Of The Mad Bastards”, then keeps darting between proper songs and sharp interludes. Side B feels darker and more fractured, ending with “Lived In Splendour: Died In Chaos” and the mordant coda “The Beat That Refused To Die”. It plays like a pirate broadcast from a future where rock has swallowed the sampler whole.
Grebo grows up, gets darker, and heads to the dance floor 🔊
PWEI had come out of the grebo scene, but Cure For Sanity pushes far past scruffy indie rock. This is alternative rock built from breakbeats, house pulse, industrial abrasion and hip hop logic. Guitars are still there, but they no longer rule the room. They jab, scrape and colour the tracks while the beats and samples do the heavy lifting.
That is what makes the album distinctive. It treats rock as something you can edit, loop and rebuild. “Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina (Extra Time Mix)” shows the club side in full, while “Dance Of The Mad Bastards” and “Nightmare At 20,000 FT” bring in a nastier metallic edge. Even the humour feels more barbed than on earlier records. PWEI were still cheeky, but this album has a meaner grin.
Reception, charts, and where it sat in 1990 📈
The album reached No. 33 on the UK Albums Chart, while “X Y & Zee” became a sizeable hit at No. 15. Critics were split. Some admired how modern it sounded, especially the production and the collision of hip hop grooves with aggressive electronics. Others missed the lighter, more immediate feel of the previous album.
That split makes sense. Cure For Sanity arrived just before grunge took over the alternative conversation, but it answered the same hunger for something rougher than polished late-80s pop. The difference is that PWEI’s answer came through samplers and club culture rather than muddy guitars and slacker angst.
Why it still matters 🧨
Its legacy lies in how boldly it ignores the usual rock rules. PWEI were using a DIY mindset inside a major-label setup, treating pop culture debris as raw material and building songs from collision rather than purity. You can hear a path here towards big beat, industrial rock, and later British acts who felt no need to choose between riffs and machines.
So Cure For Sanity is not merely a period piece from the grunge era’s edge. It is one of those records that asks, very early on, why rock music should behave like rock music at all.
Spartacus by The Farm 🚂
🎛️ From Liverpool indie lifers to a No. 1 album
Released on 4 March 1991 on the band’s own Produce Records, Spartacus has the feel of a long build finally paying off. The Farm had been around through the 1980s, working their way out of Liverpool with a real independent streak, and that history matters. This was not a flash-in-the-pan major label invention. It came from years of gigging, self-belief and absorbing what was happening around them, from post-punk to the acid house boom.
The recording itself was split across sessions in 1987 and 1990, with most of the album cut at Mayfair and Liquidator in London, plus work at Fairview in Hull. Much of it was produced by Graham “Suggs” McPherson of Madness, which is a lovely period detail. Suggs helped give the record a cleaner, more pop-aware shape without sanding off its club energy. “Tell The Story” even reaches back further, with production from Housemartins pair Paul Heaton and Stan Cullimore, which says a lot about where The Farm sat in the British indie family tree.
🥁 Guitars, grooves and the baggy sweet spot
What makes Spartacus distinctive is the way it joins indie rock muscle to dancefloor motion. This is baggy at heart, but with a Liverpool pop sense and a stronger singalong instinct than some of its peers. The guitars rarely bulldoze the songs. Instead they chime, scratch, pulse and colour the rhythm. The real drive often comes from the bass and drums, which lock into repeating grooves that owe as much to club culture as to rock tradition.
That is why tracks like “Groovy Train” work so well. The rhythm section pushes forward with real snap, while the guitars keep the tune airy and mobile. “All Together Now” does something slightly different, borrowing from Pachelbel’s Canon and turning it into a huge communal anthem. It is easy to forget how odd that combination really is, classical melody, football-terrace warmth and indie-dance production, but The Farm make it sound natural.
📈 Hit record, mixed reviews, lasting afterlife
Commercially, Spartacus was massive. It reached No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, “Groovy Train” broke them into the Top 10, and “All Together Now” went to No. 4 and lived on far beyond its chart run. That song became part of British public life, turning up at football matches, celebrations and nostalgic 90s playlists.
Critics were split then and have stayed split since. Some loved its melodic rush and club-meets-band chemistry, while others later treated it as too tied to its moment. Still, that moment matters. Before grunge took over late in 1991, Spartacus captured another route for alternative music, one built on uplift, grooves and collective release rather than angst and distortion. Your vinyl also makes that point beautifully, because the Terry Farley remix EP is not a bonus afterthought. It shows how naturally these songs could move between album listening and DJ culture. That hybrid spirit is the album’s real legacy.
Cookie Happened by Eels 🍪
🎙️ A late-period Eels record with familiar bruises
Released on 16 October 2026 through E Works Records and Play It Again Sam, Cookie Happened arrived as Eels’ sixteenth studio album, and it feels very much like Mark Oliver Everett returning to his natural habitat. The vinyl running order on your copy has a neat shape to it, from the blunt opener “Clobbered” through to “The Way I Was Made”, and the song titles alone tell you plenty about the mood. “Bamboozled Again”, “Congratulations To Me” and “Dum Dums” have that dry Eels wink, while “New Story” and “I’m On Standby” hint at the more wounded side of the band.
Public information on the recording itself is still fairly thin. There has not been much in the way of detailed studio breakdowns, gear talk, or track-by-track production notes. So the safest reading is that this is another auteur-style Eels album, shaped above all by E’s songwriting voice and his talent for turning small defeats into memorable songs. That lack of fuss suits the music. Early reviews described it as a classic Eels record, stripped of needless decoration.
🎸 Guitar, groove and the art of saying a lot with little
What makes Cookie Happened distinctive is how little it appears to strain for effect. Eels have always been good at making plainspoken rock sound oddly intimate, and this album seems built on that same skill. The guitar work is less about flash than weight and timing. You get the sense of riffs and chords being placed exactly where they need to be, giving the songs shape without crowding the vocal.
The rhythm section matters just as much. Eels’ best records often depend on a grounded, almost stubborn pulse beneath lyrics full of doubt, embarrassment, or black humour. That push and pull appears to define this album too. Even when the material sounds reflective, the beat keeps it moving. In a moment when plenty of indie rock drifts towards texture and haze, Eels still trust a song with bones.
🌍 Themes for the 2020s, without sloganeering
There is no strong sign that Cookie Happened is an explicitly political album, and there is no firm evidence that pandemic-era remote collaboration shaped the sessions in any direct way. Still, it lands in a culture that recognises its concerns instantly. These songs seem tuned to exhaustion, second chances, self-mockery, and the strange business of carrying on after things go wrong.
That is where the album fits contemporary genre fluidity as well. It is alternative rock, indie rock, singer-songwriter confession, and barbed pop craft all at once, though never in a manner that feels calculated. Eels have long moved between those modes, and Cookie Happened sounds like another entry in that tradition.
📰 Early reception and where it may sit in the catalogue
Initial notices were warm. Reviewers in Europe heard it as a contemplative, comforting, very recognisable Eels album, one that finds humour in failure rather than trying to transcend it. Commercial results are still hard to pin down, so it is too early to talk about charts or long-term influence with any confidence.
What already seems clear is this: Cookie Happened is not a dramatic reinvention. It is something better suited to Eels, a sharp, humane, guitar-led set of songs by a band still finding fresh ways to sound battered, funny and oddly reassuring.
Welcome To Wherever You Are by INXS 🌍
Recording a left turn 🎛️
Released in 1992 on EastWest, Welcome To Wherever You Are found INXS stepping away from the glossy hit-machine feel of Kick and X. The band recorded it at Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney, working with Mark Opitz, an old ally from their earlier years, rather than Chris Thomas, who had guided their biggest late-80s records. That change mattered. The album has a looser, tougher feel, as if INXS wanted to remind people they were a proper band in a room, not just makers of immaculate radio singles.
They also pushed their sound further than many casual listeners realise. Alongside the core six-piece attack, the record brought in large-scale orchestral arrangements, most notably on “Baby Don’t Cry” and “Men And Women”. Elsewhere, unusual textures and a more open studio approach gave songs like “Questions” and “Communication” a restless edge. It is the sound of a band refusing to remake Kick Part Two.
Style, groove and the band’s engine ⚡
What makes this album distinctive is how many ideas it folds into a very recognisable INXS shape. You hear alternative rock bite, pop hooks, dance-rock swing, bits of 60s pop, touches of funk, and the broad-screen confidence of arena rock. Yet it never feels scattered.
The guitar work is sharper and more abrasive than on much of their late-80s material. “Heaven Sent” and “Taste It” have a wiry, hard-driving attack, while “Not Enough Time” and “Beautiful Girl” keep the melodic side front and centre. Underneath it all, Garry Gary Beers and Jon Farriss give the record its real backbone. The bass and drums do more than keep time, they create movement. That pulse is why even the heavier tracks still feel danceable, which is a very INXS trick.
Reception, risk and reputation 📰
Critics were kinder to this album than many people remember. In the UK especially, it was praised as a more heartfelt, adventurous record, and it reached number 1 there. It also did well in Australia, where it hit number 2. In the US, it reached number 16, respectable on paper, though clearly below the huge commercial highs of the Kick era.
That mixed commercial story says a lot about 1992. Rock audiences were turning towards grunge and a rougher idea of authenticity. INXS responded to that climate without pretending to be Nirvana. Instead, they made an album that sounded more rugged and exploratory while keeping their sense of rhythm, sensuality and polish.
Legacy in the streaming age 📱
Its afterlife has improved with streaming. This is exactly the sort of album that benefits when listeners can roam through a catalogue rather than stop at the biggest hits. Social media and fan communities have helped it gain a second reputation as one of INXS’s boldest records, a favourite for people who like transitional albums where big bands take real chances.
For that reason, Welcome To Wherever You Are feels modern in spirit. It blends genres freely, sidesteps easy branding, and follows mood more than market logic. On your Australian 1992 CD, the running order tells that story beautifully, from the unsettled “Questions” to the grand final statement of “Men And Women”.
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 by George Michael 🎙️
🎛️ A deliberate break from Faith
Although your copy is the 2017 European vinyl reissue on Epic and Sony Music, the music itself comes from George Michael’s bold 1990 reset. After the huge success of Faith, he could easily have delivered another slick, image-led pop blockbuster. Instead, he wrote, arranged, and produced an album that pulled away from celebrity gloss and pushed listeners towards the songs themselves. That intention is there in the title, and in the music.
Recorded largely between 1989 and 1990 in London, the album has a more restrained feel than Faith. Michael traded some of the late-80s flash for piano, acoustic guitar, elegant backing vocals, strings, and carefully judged studio space. Even when synths and programmed rhythms appear, they support the mood rather than dominate it. The sequencing on vinyl really helps: Side A moves from the stark moral sweep of “Praying For Time” to the aching, slow-burn jazz-pop of “Cowboys And Angels”, while Side B softens into reflection and release, ending with the hushed “Waiting (Reprise)”.
🎶 Style, soul and the album’s blues undercurrent
This is a pop record, but it is never boxed into one lane. You hear synth-pop, downtempo, soul, folk-pop, soft rock, gospel colour and a touch of jazz phrasing. “Freedom! ’90” is big, rhythmic and radio-facing, while “Mother’s Pride” strips things back for a quiet anti-war lament. “They Won’t Go When I Go”, Michael’s reading of Stevie Wonder, brings a solemn spiritual weight.
The “blues” element is less about 12-bar form and more about feeling and technique. Michael sings with blue-note inflection, melisma, breathy tension and release, and a real sense of ache. “Cowboys And Angels” and “Soul Free” especially lean on soulful phrasing and emotional hesitation, that push-pull that gives blues and soul their human grain. He uses repetition well too, letting a phrase gather meaning each time it returns.
📰 Reception, conflict and afterlife
On release, critics largely admired the maturity of the writing, even if some missed the instant hooks of Faith. Commercially, it was a major hit in the UK, reaching number one and later winning the Brit Award for Best British Album. In the US, it performed well but not at the same towering level as Faith, which fed Michael’s bitter dispute with Sony over promotion and artistic control.
That tension is now part of the album’s story. What once looked like a risky left turn now feels like one of his wisest moves.
📱 Why the 2017 vinyl reissue matters
The 2017 reissue landed in a very different music world, one shaped by streaming, playlists and constant artist visibility on social media. Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 almost argues against all of that. It asks for patience, full-album listening and attention to tone. In an era of endless self-exposure, Michael’s refusal to centre his own face and persona feels even more striking. That is one reason this record has aged so well. It sounds intimate, thoughtful and self-possessed, and the vinyl format suits it beautifully.
The Seeds Of Love by Tears For Fears 🌻
🎙️ A long, costly, perfectionist birth
Although your copy is the handsome 2012 US Mobile Fidelity vinyl reissue, the album itself comes from 1989, and it had one of the most drawn-out gestations in major-label pop. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith spent roughly three years making it, scrapping early sessions with Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, then moving through other false starts before settling into a more self-directed process with engineer and co-producer Dave Bascombe. Reports at the time put the budget near £1 million, a huge sum for an album that ended up with just eight tracks.
That slow method helps explain why Side A feels so carefully staged on your pressing. “Woman In Chains” opens with real gravity, then “Badman’s Song” stretches out into a full-blown suite before the title track arrives like a burst of colour. Tears For Fears were no longer content with sleek synth-pop. They were building a studio world, layer by layer. Oleta Adams became a central presence after the duo discovered her in a Kansas City hotel bar, and her voice gives “Woman In Chains” its soul and force. Phil Collins’ drums on that track add weight without crowding the space.
🎹 Psychedelia, soul and art-pop in one frame
What makes The Seeds Of Love distinctive is how boldly it swerves from the band’s earlier new-wave image. “Sowing The Seeds Of Love” leans into Beatles-inspired psychedelia, all brass flashes, keyboard colour and cheeky rhythmic shifts. “Advice For The Young At Heart” is warmer and more direct, with Curt Smith carrying one of the album’s most inviting melodies. “Standing On The Corner Of The Third World” and “Year Of The Knife” push further out, bringing in jazzier rhythms, darker moods and a tense political edge.
It is still pop, but pop made with album-listener patience. The hooks are there, yet they often arrive through arrangement as much as chorus. A drum part, a vocal layer, a sudden brass accent, these are as memorable as the titles.
📰 Reception, success and the politics in the songs
The record was well received, even if some critics thought the scale bordered on excess. It reached number one in the UK and the US Top 10, while “Sowing The Seeds Of Love” became a major hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The title track’s idealism and frustration made sense in the closing years of the Thatcher-Reagan era, and “Woman In Chains” tackled gendered oppression with unusual seriousness for mainstream pop radio.
Those themes still land. This is not slogan-writing, but songs shaped by unease about power, inequality and violence.
📱 Why it still travels well now
In the streaming era, the big singles are the gateway, especially “Sowing The Seeds Of Love” and “Woman In Chains”, but the album rewards a full-sequence listen more than most playlist-friendly records. That is one reason your Mobile Fidelity edition suits it so well. This is music built from detail, depth and contrast.
Social media tends to revive striking moments, and this album has plenty of them: Oleta Adams’ entrance, the explosive chorus of the title track, the stately close of “Famous Last Words”. Its genre-mixing now feels normal, even modern. Back then, it was lavish and unusual. Now it sounds like a reminder that pop can be ambitious, melodic and deeply human all at once.
Top Artists (Week 42)
- Pop Will Eat Itself (17 plays)
- The Farm (16 plays)
- Eels (12 plays)
- INXS (12 plays)
- George Michael (10 plays)
- Tears for Fears (8 plays)